


5 times Hermann refused to go on a date with Newton and one time he asked

by Ciulla96



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bickering, Drunk Newton Geiszler, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Love, Love Confessions, Love/Hate, M/M, Romance, Workplace Relationship, date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 14:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciulla96/pseuds/Ciulla96
Summary: The first time, Newton asks Hermann to go swimming together.The second time, he asks him out on a date.The third time, he asks him out to dinner.The fourth time, he asks to have a sleepover. Just the two of them.The fifth time, he's drunk. It doesn't even count.It certainly takes Hermann quite a long time to understand the other is interested in him...
Relationships: Newton Geiszler & Hermann Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	5 times Hermann refused to go on a date with Newton and one time he asked

It was a day like any other at the K-Sci Lab in the Honk Kong Shatterdome. Newton was working on some kaiju samples while listening to his music, which was reverberating so loudly that he couldn’t even hear Hermann shouting at him. Plus, Hermann was shouting at him, which was a clear sign that nothing different was going on that day.  
From the top of his ladder, Hermann was actually putting on quite a show to try and get Newt’s attention. He was truly ridiculous, frantically shaking his arms in the air and angrily shouting through his lips – his gestures were actually following the beat of the currently playing hard rock song, as if he was trying to sing and dance on it, and Newt was having a hard time trying not to laugh at him. When all of that fussing brought Hermann close to losing his balance, though, Newt decided to turn down the music a bit, just to listen to what the mathematician had to say – neither of them would have benefited from Hermann falling on the floor, since Newt would have had to stop working to clean and sterilize the lab, and Hermann would have stopped as well because he would likely be dead, or at least severely injured.  
“What’s wrong, dude?” Newt calmly asked in the sudden silence, smiling softly at the angry face that was looking at him with obvious homicidal thoughts.  
“What’s wrong? Your awful music is so loud I can’t focus on my equations!”  
“Could you please keep your voice down?” Newton politely asked. “It’s so loud I can’t focus on my music”.  
He always had fun messing with Hermann, but apparently this time the man wasn’t going to stand for it. He lost his temper way sooner than usual and Newton saw a piece of chalk flying toward him as if it was in slow motion, before hitting his head and falling on the floor.  
The xenobiologist looked at it for a few moments, before turning to Hermann and opening his arms. “What the fuck, dude?”  
“I’m… Sorry”, Hermann answered, looking at him with his eyes wide open, unsettled by his own action. “I don’t know what got into me. I’m having trouble with this model and…”  
“And you decided to throw chalk at me?” Newt angrily asked. “Now I have to wash my hair!”  
“Sure, you spend half of your life covered in kaiju body fluids and you’re worried about chalk in your hair”, Hermann muttered, coming down the ladder to retrieve his piece of chalk. “Go to your room, then. I’ll explain the situation to the marshal if he arrives”.  
“No way, dude! You’re definitely going to talk shit about me as soon as leave. I’m using the emergency shower”. Newt started heading toward it, trying to ignore the thump of Hermann’s cane who was obviously following him for God knows whatever reason.  
“You are not going to use the emergency shower! It’s for emergencies!” Hermann shouted trying to stop him. “This is not an emergency, Newton. You’re not risking anything, you’re just…”  
“I might be allergic to chalk, in which case…”  
“You are not allergic to chalk, and the Marshal knows that. I’ll have to call him if you don’t stop immediately”.  
“Go on, then”, Newton challenged him, before starting to take his clothes off. “Call him”. He found himself stuck in his shirt while trying to take it off without unbuttoning it. When he freed himself, Hermann was already gone.  
At last, some peace.

When Newt got out of the shower, Hermann was waiting for him with a stern look on his face. Next to him, the Marshal looked more bored than angry, obviously sick of continuously being brought into their fights, but that didn’t prevent him from firmly glaring at the xenobiologist, while Hermann quickly looked the other way with a blush on his face when he noticed the colleague was covered in his tattoos and nothing else.   
“Hey dude! I’m sorry Hermann bothered you for such a stupid reason”, Newton said looking at Pentecost, but the man quickly stopped him. “Dr Geiszler, as Dr Gottlieb has had the courtesy to remind me with a truly unnecessary amount of words, emergency shower is to be used for emergency, not for chalk in your hair”, he stated. “There could have been a true emergency while you were occupying it for no good reason”.  
“In which case”, Newt replied, “I would have been glad to share the shower with Hermann”.  
When not one but two people looked at him as if on the verge of killing him, he sighed, defeated, and wrapped a towel around his waist. “C’mon, man, it’s just the two of us in the lab and I’m the only one working with potentially dangerous stuff. There was no chance the shower could have been of any use to him”.  
“Unfortunately, Dr Geiszler, this doesn’t justify you breaking the rules. I’m going to accept Dr Gottlieb’s formal complaint, should he file it. And I’ve been assured he will. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you this is the second complaint against you in a week. Should a third one come before the end of the month, you’ll have to attend the nine-hour seminar on the correct behavior in lab. Again”.  
“But – Why don’t you ever accept my complaints against him? I – I’m gonna file one too, he threw chalk at me, he should be…”  
“Dr Geiszler”, the marshal stopped him. “File the complaint, if you must, but I probably won’t accept it. Throwing chalk at you certainly was rude, but it wasn’t potentially dangerous, while your use of the shower was. That’s all I have to say”.  
“Fine”, Newt muttered. He wanted to shout at Hermann for never cutting him some slack, but he was sure that doing this in front of the Marshal would have been considered an “offensive lack of respect in front of his superiors”, which he had already received several complaints for. He truly didn’t want to attend the seminary for the seventh time – due to the lack of personnel, Hermann was the one holding it and Newton was forced to pay attention to him, since he had to pass a final confirmatory test, otherwise he would have been prevented from entering the lab. Obviously, his colleague seemed to find a sadistic pleasure in constantly increasing the difficulty and absurdity of the questions. The last time Hermann had asked him what behavior was to be held in the event that a raccoon entered the lab and started messing with kaiju’s lung tissues. Newt had laughed at the absurdity of the question and refused to consider such an unlikely event, but the following night a raccoon had entered the lab. That couldn’t have been a coincidence, but so far he had never been able to prove it and he truly didn’t want to repeat the experience.  
When Pentecost left the lab with a sigh of relief, though, Newt decided he wasn’t going to let Hermann get away with it. He patiently got dressed, wore his latex gloves, walked to his desk, grabbed a part of the Kaiju bowel he was examining, walked to Hermann who was now working at his simulations on the computer and dropped the entrails on his head.  
Hermann’s peaceful smirk immediately disappeared, replaced by a look of shock and horror. Newt calmly smiled, shaking his head. “Do you want to use the emergency shower, Herms? You can’t, you see, this is not an emergency. The samples are perfectly safe, I personally neutralized every bit of them. They’re harmless, they’re just…” He maliciously ran a finger on Hermann’s hair. “They’re just disgusting, and terribly slimy, and so hard to wash away if you let them dry…”  
“I…” Hermann opened and closed his mouth a few times. “I… I will tell the Marshal…”  
“Oh, but, you see, you didn’t get punished for throwing a piece of chalk at me, so why should I be punished for throwing some perfectly harmless entrails at you? If I were you, I’d stop stuttering and rush to get that stuff off of my hair…”  
“Fine”, Hermann snapped, admitting defeat. “I’m using the emergency shower, and I… I won’t file that complaint”.  
“You’d better not!” Newt answered, laughing out loud while watching Hermann rushing to the shower and trying to get his clothes off without leaving the cane. He went back to work humming to himself, satisfied and content, until he heard a thump coming from the shower, followed by a loud moan of pain.  
Newt immediately dropped the samples he was examining on the floor and rushed to the shower, opening it with unexpected fear, and then he stood there, eyes wide open, unable to move.  
Hermann had fallen, and Newt immediately felt like an idiot for forcing him in an obviously dangerous situation. They had never thought Hermann would have eventually needed the emergency shower, so no one had ever taken into consideration adding a stool for him to sit on while washing. But now, Newt had forced him to wash without thinking about his difficulties, Hermann was hurt and it was all his fault.  
Seeing him sprawled on the floor with that pained face was truly horrible. But then, when he took a moment to better look at his colleague, all the guilt was replaced by wonder and desire.  
Hermann was gorgeous.  
Under those layers of loose clothes, Hermann Gottlieb was one of the most beautiful beings Newt had ever seen in his whole life.  
He was lean, but not skinny. He was curiously well-built. He was bending forward, hiding his abs but showing large shoulders, his back muscles tensed up as water ran gently among his perfect shoulder blades. His right leg was bent under his body, but his left leg was stretched on the floor, a wonderful, long and sinuous leg, and Hermann’s strong hands were desperately grasping it, his long, thin fingers sinking deep into the sore flesh. _He goes swimming every week, it’s part of his therapy, _Newt remembered. That explained why he was so… Handsome. And swimmers were flexible, too. _God, I wonder what he can do with that body…_  
Hermann raised his look and met Newt’s strangely excited eyes. “Newton”, he muttered through his teeth. He seemed upset and embarrassed at the same time, probably in need for help but too ashamed to ask. “As you can see, I fell. Instead of watching me so impassively, would you please help me get up?”  
“I’d rather help you get off, dude”.  
“I – What?”  
“What? No, I – I mean”, Newt nervously cleared his throat, “I’m totally getting you out of that shower, man”.  
“Thanks”, Hermann sighed, trying to hide the fact that he was blushing. Newton tentatively reached out and turned off the shower, before moving behind Hermann’s back – his wonderful, muscular, perfectly proportioned back – and lifting him up placing his arms around his chest. Once Hermann got up and gestured at Newt to let him go, the xenobiologist rushed out of the shower, handed Hermann his cane and a towel and pulled a chair close to his colleague, to sit on while he got dressed. He was feeling a strange mix of worry and arousal which he couldn’t properly name. The only thing he could think of at the moment was Hermann, trying to cover as much of his naked body as he could, smiling at him almost gratefully and completely unaware of what his wonderful body was doing to Newt’s mental sanity.  
The xenobiologist mumbled something about being sorry for the entrails in Hermann’s hair, but the colleague merely shrugged and accepted his apologies with a small nod. The good thing about bickering all the time was that forgiving was just as spontaneous. What Newt didn’t expect was gratitude coming out of Hermann’s lips.  
“Thank you for helping me out, Newton. Now, will you please turn around, so I can get dressed?”  
“Sure, sure”, Newt answered quickly giving his back to Hermann. This way it was easier to talk, but Newt’s thoughts were still a bit confused. “Dude, so, you, you swim, don’t you?”  
“I truly can’t possibly imagine how you came up with this question right now but yes, I do swim, as I’ve already told you several times”.  
Newton tried to imagine Hermann’s back muscles tensing up while swimming, his legs moving in the water, his horrible haircut covered by a swim cap – the image of perfection.  
Before he was able to stop himself, Newt was speaking again. “I was thinking we – We should go swimming together, sometimes”.  
After a few moments of silence, he turned to Hermann and found him intently looking at him. He had his pants on, but he was still shirtless. It was an amazing view and Newt found it hard to raise his look and meet Hermann’s eyes.  
The mathematician looked at him for a few more moments, than he shook his head. “I’m not really looking forward to being drowned by you, Newton. No offence meant”. He put his shirt on and started buttoning it, leaving Newton with a bitter feeling of rejection.  
“None taken”, the xenobiologist answered. But he was not going to give up.

* * *

During the following days Newton couldn’t stop thinking about what Hermann was hiding under his horrible sweaters. He caught himself staring at the mathematician more and more often, burning with the desire of seeing him shirtless again and resenting the thought that someone else could see him like that. He desperately wanted to be the only person allowed to witness such a level of perfection, he wanted to… To own Hermann body and get to decide whether someone else could look at him. He wanted to caress sweetly Hermann’s back, to kiss his chest and lick his neck and, above it all, he wanted to stop thinking about it and be able to go back to his work.   
It took him a few days of obsessing over Hermann to understand that he had to do something if he wanted the situation to go back to normal. At first, he decided to ask Pentecost for separate working buildings, so that he would have necessarily stopped getting distracted by his colleague’s presence, but he knew Hermann had already tried several times without succeeding. There wasn’t enough funding to provide them with different working places.  
The only other option was to try and get what he wanted, and that was something Newton was definitely willing to do.  
A week after the shower accident, Newton set his alarm clock at a very unusually early time and rushed into the lab an hour before Hermann, setting up a surprise for his colleague.  
When Hermann, precisely at eight o’ clock, limped into the lab, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the last remnants of sleep, he didn’t notice immediately what Newt had done. He headed toward his ladder and he was almost halfway to the top of the chalkboard when he saw it.  
Half of his chalkboard was covered in a huge inscription, adorned with silly smiles and little hearts and kaiju-shaped doodles.  
_Will you go out with me? – Newt __😊_  
Newton was staring awkwardly at Hermann, waiting for any kind of reaction. He was expecting a refusal, or a laugh, but neither of those came. Hermann simply climbed down the ladder without pronouncing a word until his feet were once again on the floor, then he turned to Newt, his face flushing red, his fingers shaking while pointing at the chalkboard.  
“Newton”, Hermann started, trying to keep calm and inhaling deeply twice before continuing. “You do realize – don’t you – that you have erased at least three days of work to write that… Thing?”  
Newton started breathing a little easier with relief. That wasn’t a definite rejection, was it? “Don’t worry, my man!” He answered, taking his phone out of his pocket and shaking it with pride. “I took plenty of photos before erasing it! Everything is safe! Your complicate equations and brilliant ideas are enclosed in this tiny, smart piece of technology…” He was clearly rambling, more nervous than he would ever admit, and his sweaty hand, unnoticed, was slowly losing its grip on the phone, until the device slipped out of it and fell into the container full of the kaiju blood Newt was currently examining.  
“Oh my god”, Hermann and Newton whispered at the same time – but for different reasons. Hermann was horrified by the fate of his precious equations, while Newton had already forgotten about it, too excited by what that blood was doing to his phone. While Hermann kept staring at it incredulously, Newton grabbed his recorder from his pocket and turned it on, starting to talk. “After neutralizing it to make it harmless for human’s tissues, kaiju blood is still able to eat through the main components of a cellphone – the glass, made of aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide, is completely eaten away in three seconds, as well as the case in plastic. Metal components are more resistant, as proven by the fact the iron container isn’t displaying any sign of corrosion, but circuitry and batteries are slowly…” He stopped when Hermann hit him on the legs with his cane to push him away and started taking the remnants of the cellphone out of the blood using Newt’s iron pliers. “What the hell, dude?” Newt asked, before noticing Hermann’s pale face and remembering what they were talking about before everything happened. His annoyance immediately faded away as he lightly touched Hermann’s shoulder and sighed, turning off the recorder. “Hey, man”, he squeaked, scared. “The – uhm – the memory chips are made of silicon…”  
“I know what bloody memory chips are made of, Dr Geiszler”.  
“Erm – since the glass of the cellphone was so easily corroded then we should assume that…”  
“I know”. Hermann cut short, finally dropping the pliers in the container. He headed toward the chalkboard with no further words and started erasing Newton’s question with heat and rage. The xenobiologist sighed and cursed himself for his damn ability to ruin everything. He went back to his work, not really expecting an answer from Hermann anymore.  
The answer eventually arrived, anyway. When Hermann walked out of the lab to go grab some lunch, Newton, hoping for God knows what, couldn’t help but look back at the chalkboard.  
Half of it was occupied by a single word.  
_NO._

* * *

Hermann didn’t talk to him for a week. He arrived everyday in the lab at 8 o’ clock and left at midnight, only eating cold stuff from their shared mini-fridge and never saying anything. He didn’t complain about the music, the entrails, or Newton’s existence in general, and he didn’t seem to notice all the peace offers the biologist was sending to him – fresh new chalks every morning, no food stolen from his personal supply, pop music instead of rock, and even a postcard with a sad kitten saying _forgive meow!_ which was so cute Newt was certain it would have fixed everything, except it didn’t.  
Newton still didn’t want to give up with his plan – going on a date with Hermann and falling in love and making him fall in love and seeing him naked everyday – but how could he even try to ask him out if the other one was pretending he didn’t exist?  
Eight days after the accident, Newton decided to attack the problem head on. Which meant going into the lab ten minutes before Hermann, locking the door and waiting.  
Ten minutes later, he heard the soft thumps of Hermann’s cane approaching the lab. He heard him stopping, trying to open the door, and starting to knock.  
With a small smile, Newton turned on his music and pretended not to hear him. The knocks became more frequent and strong, until he was almost sure Hermann was literally clubbing the door with the cane, but he simply ignored him and sang at the top of his lungs until his colleague lost his temper.  
“Doctor Geiszler!” He shouted. “I’ll file a complaint for this, I can assure you! I know you can hear me, open this bloody door!”  
Goal achieved! Hermann was talking to him again. He switched off his music and opened the heavy door, greeting Hermann with a smile from ear to ear. “Hermann, dude! You’re talking again! I was afraid the kitten from my postcard had got your tongue”.  
Hermann’s face was so red it could have blown up at any moment. “Dr. Geiszler, what came into you? What did you think you were doing preventing me from entering my own lab and doing my work? We are not playing some sort of game, you know, we are trying to _save the world_ here and every single moment might be precious. Your behavior is so immature and childish and inappropriate for a scientist of your caliber and…” Hermann slowly lowered his voice, startled by Newt’s huge smile. The biologist was enthusiastically nodding, his eyes shining with joy. When Hermann’s rant finally stopped they looked at each other in the eyes for a few moments, until Hermann sighed and limped toward his ladder. “Dr Geiszler. It took me a week to remember everything you erased. I hope you are ashamed of yourself”.  
“Now, now, man”, Newt replied. “No need to exaggerate. You said it was the work of three days, not a week”.  
“Well, apparently it took longer than I thought to catch up with myself”, Hermann muttered. Newt smiled, knowing the true meaning behind his words. “I know, man, I find it hard to work, too, when we aren’t talking to each other”.  
“That’s not what I said! You keep twisting my words as you please, it’s unbearable…”  
Newt smiled. He had missed this.

It didn’t take long for Newt to fall back in his old routine. Pop music was replaced with rock, new chalks stopped appearing on Hermann’s desk every morning, and Hermann’s food started disappearing in Newton’s mouth again.  
One Friday night, after finishing his work, Hermann opened the mini-fridge to rescue his beloved _Gemüsestrudel_ only to find that it had mysteriously disappeared. It was the only thing he was going to have for dinner and without it the fridge was completely empty – Hermann refilled it every weekend with the meals for the following week, and it wasn’t the first time Newton stole his food, but it was the first time he hadn’t realized it before the canteen’s closing time. It was midnight, Hermann was starving without anything to eat and he suddenly felt the urge to throttle Newton’s neck with his bare hands.  
He turned to him. Newton, from the other side of the room, was innocently looking at him with a huge smile. “Hey dude!” He said. “Something wrong? I’m going out in town to grab something to eat, you should come too! Let’s call it a date!”  
Hermann slammed the fridge door and shook his cane toward Newton, his hands trembling with anger. “Dr Geiszler”, he muttered trough his teeth, “I’d rather die of hunger than go on a date with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me”. He walked away, thumping the cane stronger than usual to hide the fact that his stomach was grumbling. He didn’t notice Newton’s smile fade away, nor the kaiju spleen he kicked in frustration, nor the mess it created when it exploded.

Hermann was too hungry to sleep, so he perfectly heard the small knock on his door that came about half an hour later. He opened the door finding no one there, but he caught the sight of a tattooed arm disappearing around the corner. He lowered his gaze and found a small package with a note on it. _Sorry for your dinner_, it simply said.  
Inside the package he found a couple of tuna sandwiches. He took into account the idea of knocking on Newton’s door to thank him and make up to him for his rude behavior, but he was so hungry and tired that he couldn’t find the strength to do anything but eat and go to sleep.  
Little did he know that Newton, hopeful, was patiently waiting for him.

* * *

At that point, Newton was sick of being hurt and rejected by the other scientist and he decided to take his revenge on his colleague. A little voice in the back of his head that strangely sounded like Hermann’s kept telling him that this was no mature behavior, but he successfully silenced it by slamming his head on Hermann’s chalkboard. It wasn’t as if he was going to seriously hurt Hermann anyway, he just wanted to make him feel sad and humiliated and hurt like he was feeling.   
The following morning, he went to the lab early again and carefully prepared his prank. He chose his oldest kaiju samples – he didn’t want to compromise his freshest entrails for Hermann’s stupid rudeness – and put them all in a box. He hid with the box inside the cupboard in front of the lab and, when he heard Hermann entering their shared workplace, he waited for a few moments, then snickered out and walked to Hermann’s room. He used his emergency keys – “_emergency keys” means they are only for emergency, doctor Geiszler, don’t use it unless I’m going to die alone in my room _– and placed all the entrails onto Hermann’s bed. A liver, half a spleen, a piece of colon, even a huge bunch of excrements. He went back to the lab snickering to himself, trying to imagine Hermann’s face when he would have found his little surprise. He was sure his revenge was going to be so sweet.  
As soon as he entered the lab, though, he was startled by his colleague, who welcomed him with half a smile and a relieved look. “Newton!” He exclaimed, and at the mere sound of his first name, the biologist was already regretting what he had just done. “Here you are! I was getting worried. I wanted to thank you for the food you brought me yesterday. I was too tired to come and apologize yesterday evening, but I wanted you to know that I realize the fact that you stealing my food didn’t justify my horrible behavior. I truly didn’t mean what I said”. Newton immediately blushed. Maybe, just maybe, Hermann was trying to tell him in his own way that he was available for a date! “Really – dude, are you serious? You didn’t mean it?”  
Hermann frowned, shaking his head. “Well, of course not. Now, I don’t remember my exact words, but – Oh wait”, he said, suddenly blushing. “Wait, now – now I remember. Well, the point is, I shouldn’t have been so rude, you see. You wanted to go on a work date, I guess? And I should have just accepted, it could have been pleasant. I was just angry at you. I’ll get more _Gemüsestrudel _next time, since you enjoyed it so much”.  
A _work date?_ Did such a thing even exist? How could Hermann be so dense? Newton sighed and shook his head. “Apology accepted, man”, he simply answered, going back to his work.  
His flirting techniques obviously weren’t working. What was he supposed to do now? Be honest and tell him the date was meant to be romantic and that he wanted to see him naked? That was way too embarrassing, he would have made a fool of himself if Hermann had refused. Kiss him out of the blue? Same thingstory and Hermann would have probably thought it was a _friendly kiss_ anyway. If _work dates_ truly existed, then _friendly kisses _had to be a thing, too.  
Newton was so deep in his thoughts he completely forgot about the crap he had put on Hermann’s bed.

He was reminded of it later that night, when his thoughts about kaiju and tattoos and Hermann’s sorry face were interrupted by a firm knock on the door. It sounded angry and upset. Could knocks sound angry and upset? Newton didn’t know, but this one certainly sounded like it.  
He saw Hermann through the peephole and immediately remembered his misdeeds from that morning. He shivered and slowly opened the door, certain that his night was going to turn into a horrible nightmare.  
Hermann’s face was actually angry, but the half-smile he gave Newton made the biologist think that maybe his anger wasn’t directed towards him. “Hey, Newton”, Hermann started, trying not to look at the biologist in the eyes. “I went back to my room and it was full of bugs. A real infestation, actually, I could do nothing but call the exterminators. They still don’t know what caused it but, well, I need a place to crash for the night and I thought maybe I could use your couch?”  
A nightmare? Newton’s night was not going to turn into a nightmare. In fact, it was going to turn into the sweetest of dreams!  
“A couch? With that leg of yours? No fucking way, dude! I have a double sized bed”.

In the end, Hermann talked him out of sharing and without even understanding how, Newton found himself agreeing to leave his whole bed to the mathematician and settle on the couch for a night. He was lying there turning uncomfortably on the spot and trying not to fall on the floor when he heard Hermann limping out of the bedroom. He immediately sat up, looking at his colleague with a huge smile. “Please tell me you reconsidered the idea of sleeping together. The couch is terrible”.  
Hermann sighed, gesturing him to scoot over and sitting at his side, their knees touching. “No, but I don’t seem to be able to fall asleep tonight, so you might as well go and sleep in your own bed. I’ll stay here”.  
“I’m not sleepy either, man!” Newton answered eagerly, try to suppress a treacherous yawn. “Let’s chat!”  
“Oh, please. I sure am _dying _to talk about nothing with you any other time, but I find hard to focus on a conversation when I’m sitting next to a grown-up man who wears a…” He took a careful look at Newton, trying to focus on the bright shapes on his clothes. “A footie pajamas with… Are those little kaijus?”  
“Dude, they are pokémon! Your childhood surely must have been horrible if you have never heard pokémon!” Newton answered outraged. “And my onesie is certainly better than your hideous, monochrome, long-sleeved black pajamas, by the way. Seriously, you look at least twenty years older in that. My grandfather’s night attire is more juvenile than yours, and he sleeps in a suit!”  
“I thought all of your grandparents were dead”, Hermann replied. He frowned at the eloquent look he had in response. “Oh, right. That’s not funny, Newton”.  
“Yeah, my grandfather never laughs at that, either”.  
“Newton!”  
“Fine, fine!” Newton laughed, raising his hands. “I get it, enough jokes about dead people. But you really need to get an education about pokémon, dude. You totally look like a Watchog”.  
“I look like a what?”  
“-Chog!”  
They ended up spending all night bickering about pokémon and kaiju, clothes and grandfathers, and when they finally fell asleep, still sitting next to each other on the couch, it was only a couple of hours before Newt’s alarm went ringing.  
Awakened by the sound, the xenobiologist tentatively reached for his phone on the floor and turned it off, then he resumed his previous sleeping position. He then quickly realized he was sleeping on Hermann’s shoulder and he had been drooling all over it. And Hermann seemed very upset about it. Actually, he seemed really angry. Furious, almost. “Hey Herms, good morning!” Newt nervously smiled, trying to dry the mess on his colleague’s pajamas with a sleeve of his own’s. “What a pleasant night, wasn’t it?” He tried again when he didn’t receive any response. “We should do that again sometime. A sleepover, just you and me. We could call it a date!”  
“Sure thing!” Hermann answered, but Newton couldn’t really celebrate. Hermann obviously wasn’t serious; indeed, he seemed only overly sarcastic. He shook his hand in front of Newton’s face and only then the xenobiologist noticed he was holding his phone, as if he had just received a call. “What about the next time _you put kaiju entrails in my bed causing an infestation_?”  
“Oh they… They told you, I guess”, Newton whispered, sadly. “Listen dude, I’m sorry, I truly didn’t mean to… I just felt hurt about the way to treated me the night before and… And then you apologized and I just forgot…”  
“Shut up, Newton”, Hermann sighed. “No harm done, I guess. And you did let me sleep here, after all. Let’s forget it happened, shall we?”  
“I had a great time, Herms, I don’t want to forget!” Newton answered. But Hermann didn’t say anything else – he just grabbed his clothes and silently walked out of the room.

* * *

A few nights later, Hermann was lying in his bed, trying to get a few hours of sleep before starting another day of work. He probably was going to spend another sleepless night, though, since his leg was hurting pretty badly and he just couldn’t stop thinking about Newton’s latest behavior.   
His colleague had been so… Weird. And with weird, Hermann meant that Newton was totally flirting with him. Well, Newton flirted with pretty much everything that breathed, but this was too much even by his standards. For instance, he kept complimenting his work, and that was something he normally would have never done. And, the previous morning, Hermann had found a rose on his desk. It could have been anyone’s, of course, however he closed the lab’s door every night and Newton and Pentecost were the only other people in the whole Shatterdome who had the keys. Obviously, the marshal had better things to do than leave roses on his desk, but he couldn’t say the same about Newton. In addition, according to his small amount of recent achievements, Newton had been neglecting his work for at least a couple of weeks, which could have been related to the fact that Hermann had caught the man staring at him more than once.  
Hermann sighed, turning inside the covers trying not to put weight on his bad leg. All of this was unsettling him so much. He didn’t know if Newton was being serious about this newfound affection or if he was just playing with him just like he enjoyed doing so much. In all of their years of lab sharing Hermann had developed some feelings for that funny little maniac kaiju groupie, and even though he could easily hide them without making others notice, he still found Newton’s recent jokes unsettling and really hoped for them to either stop or, who knows, develop into something more. But how could that even happen if all Newton was capable of doing was joke around without ever being serious about anything?  
Hermann’s confused thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a few firm knocks on the door. The mathematician tried to get up as soon as he could, but apparently his efforts weren’t quick enough for whoever was behind that door, since he was now punching it repeatedly and insistently. He hurried up with a groan of pain, starting to fear a serious emergency of some kind – maybe his models were somehow wrong and there had been a Kaiju attack way sooner than expected.  
“Hermann? Hermann, it’s me. Open the door, please!”  
As soon as he recognized Newton’s voice, Hermann was tempted to go back to his bed – he really didn’t think he could spend more time than he already did bearing the other man’s provocative behavior. But in that case the biologist probably would have kept banging on the door all night, so it was still better to give in and see what he had to say.  
“Newton”, he sighed opening the door, “What the hell…” He couldn’t go on since Newton practically jumped on him and hugged him as tightly as he could. “Hermann”, he mumbled, “I can’t go on with this, I’m exhausted, I’ve been trying for weeks to make you understand I want to be with you in every way you could ever imagine but you’re too dense to understand and I can’t bear it anymore. Please, just go out with me and give me a chance to prove I’m worth it. First I just wanted your body because holy kaiju are you hot but now I think it’s more than that because I realized that I want to… I want to kiss you, to hold your hand in front of everyone, and if I had to choose between spending a night with you and spending a night with a wonderful Kaiju specimen I’d even consider the possibility of being with you, that’s how much I want you to say yes to going out with me and I think…”  
“Newton”, Hermann stopped him, freeing himself from his embrace and taking a step back, “Breathe”.  
Newton obeyed, taking a few deep breaths, and that was when Hermann smelled something suspicious in the air between them. “Newton”, he called, frowning in disapproval. The happiness he had started to feel after hearing the other man’s words quickly faded away replaced by worry and doubt. “By Jove, how much have you been drinking?”  
“Just a few glasses, Herms, you know, just to gather up the courage I needed and come talk to you…” Now Hermann could clearly hear it in his words too, how he was babbling and often not really finishing a word before starting the following one. His eyes seemed a bit unfocused, too. He couldn’t be relatable in those conditions, and certainly he wasn’t being himself.  
“We’ll talk about all of this in the morning, Newton. I think you should go to bed now”, he simply said. He gave him a small smile, then pushed him softly out of the room and closed the door to his face.  
He didn’t sleep much, though. He spent the night searching through the internet to see if it was true that drunk people generally said the truth.  
Newton, on his side, spent the night trying to find the way back to his room and ended up crawling and falling asleep on the sofa in the laboratory.

* * *

A few days passed. Neither of them brought back the topic, Newton pretending he didn’t remember, Hermann pretending he didn’t care, neither of them being truthful.  
They weren’t progressing much with their work. They kept glancing at each other and pretending to look in another direction when their eyes met.  
At the third day of this they both reached the point where they thought embarrassment was better than silence.  
“Listen, about that night…” Newton said, at the same moment Hermann said: “Newton, I was wondering…”  
They both stopped to let the other one talk, laughed a little, then Hermann was the first one to break the awkwardness again. “Listen, Newton, I was wondering, do you… Do you, erm, intend to eat this evening?”  
Newton glanced at him with a weird look. “Well, Hermann, that’s what I usually do for dinner. I eat”.  
Hermann blushed, then sighed and gathered the courage to ask the most important question. “And… Well, would you like if the two of us ate together?”  
Newton smiled. “Yes. I would”.


End file.
